Derry's Cormac O'Doherty pictured at Croke Park. Photo by Seb Daly/Sportsfile
By Paul Keane
Thursday afternoon and Cormac O'Doherty is in Croke Park for the official launch of the Christy Ring Cup final. This isn't his first rodeo.
In fact, while Derry are preparing for their third Ring Cup final in a row, and their fourth in five seasons, O'Doherty's personal history of appearing in All-Ireland finals at the venue stretches back well over a decade.
Between club, college and county he reckons he's up near double figures in terms of the times he's played in finals at GAA HQ. And how many times has he won?
"Two," he winced. "One with St Pat's, Maghera, the Hogan Cup final, and the Nickey Rackard with Derry in 2017. Everybody talks about how great a stadium it is but it's the very same as every other one if you lose. It would be nice to experience the winning side of it for once."
Those most recent final defeats with Derry, to Kildare in 2024 and Meath in 2023, stung.
"We started so poorly," said Slaughtneil attacker O'Doherty, referencing the Meath game. "I think it was maybe 13 or 14 points down at half-time. We'd just left ourselves with too much to do. We came back really well but we ran out of time probably in the end.
"There were a lot of learnings from all of them in fairness. But I'd say the Meath one was probably the one that we could have won. I'm not saying we should have won either. I think we probably just didn't perform well enough in any of the games to deserve victory."
O'Doherty is optimistic about this weekend's decider against London. Derry defeated London 2-19 to 1-18 when they met in the group stage though it's more the Oak Leafers' recent performances that gives him hope.
After losing to Meath in Round 3, Derry bounced back with big wins over Tyrone and Wicklow to secure their final place.
"Slowly but surely we've found form," said the free-taker. "We've got everybody injury free at the minute and we're trending well in the Christy Ring. Probably our best performances have come in the last couple of games, we're in a good position that way.
"We lost that game to Meath in the middle of the campaign, after two victories against Donegal and London. That was a tough loss, we were disappointed that we didn't do ourselves justice on the day. We had a two-week gap then to the Tyrone game and sort of reset and refocused."
Kildare did the damage in last year's Ring Cup final, beating Derry by 4-21 to 1-22, and have since gone on to qualify for this season's Joe McDonagh Cup final.
"They've shown it can be done," said O'Doherty of bridging that significant gap between Ring and McDonagh Cup activity. "It's definitely a step up but Kildare have shown that if you do things right, there's progress to be made and you can establish yourself in that competition."
They've Derry have made it back to this year's final with the majority of the players who have soldiered in recent seasons. O'Doherty believes that continuity has been important.
"It's very hard to get progress when you're chopping and changing players, or changing management," he said. "It's been a big focus of the new management that we keep the core group of players and that we add quality, year on year."
From an early stage, winning the Ring Cup was set out as a priority in 2025.
"Absolutely," said O'Doherty. "We touched on how hard defeat is here and, yeah, the carrot of winning the Christy Ring has been a massive factor in the motivation all year. We set out our stall early on that this is what we're really going after this year.
"I wouldn't say there's anything we've done really different though. It's probably just increasing that quality a wee bit more. I'd say we've added four or five quality players that have really boosted that. And we've just been playing at a higher standard, a quicker pace. It's just really cutting down on the mistakes and taking advantage of our good play."